Harold Wilson once said “a week is a long time in politics”… The weekend after Theresa May’s “agreement” on Brexit at Chequers make that sound like an understatement.
Laughter in the Commons as Theresa May pays tribute to Boris Johnson and David Davies after their resignations
On Sunday 8 July I offered something to Liberal Democrat Voice suggesting that it’s time to switch the language on Brexit into an explicit attack on “Tory Brexit”. The resignations of David Davis and Boris Johnson took that a great deal further, and left me wondering what further resignations would happen before it was read on Liberal Democrat Voice, and whether we will be in another Tory leadership contest, or hurtling into a General Election.
There’s been forceful posturing about “getting a good deal” and “how these negotiations work” and “abandonment of Brexit”. On the other side of the Commons, Jeremy Corbyn quipped that May’s Brexit deal took “two years to form and two days to unravel”.
The UK says it wants to continue use of the European Arrest Warrant, but wants out of the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. The snag is that the two go together: Michel Barnier has said he’s happy to respect the UK’s “Red line” but the UK isn’t. What’s going on?
Court of Justice of the European UnionThe bare bones are stark.
On the one hand, the European Arrest Warrant has been a remarkable success, enabling the authorities in any EU nation state to issue an arrest warrant which can be used anywhere in the EU. One of the notable success was the arrest of the people involved in the London tube bombings in 2005, and it’s widely seen as important in the fight against terrorism.
But an arrest warrant also needs some sort of judicial context so that it is possible to appeal against its mis-use. There are bi-lateral extradition agreements between countries, which need to specify where which courts have jurisdiction, but rather than the confusion of multiple bilateral agreements, the European Arrest Warrant provides for this through the Court of Justice of the European Union.
Withdrawl from the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union is (apparently) one of the British government’s “red lines” in talks over Brexit. Michel Barnier has bluntly pointed out that he is willing to recognise the UK’s “red lines” and wishes the UK would do the same.
